Classics 351
September 29, 2020

South Italian Vase (4th century BCE)

Response #1 (due Thursday, 10:00am)

Examination #1 Key

Plautus's Amphitryon (cont.)

• structure of a comedy with Doppelgänger (comedy of confusion, ontological challenges)?
  
  
• the character of Jupiter? Amphitryon? (mask & costume?)
  
  
• Scene 5: charge of adultery and the prospect of divorce; the golden bowl/drinking cup (770ff.); Sosia as comic diversion (cf. comic perspective in messenger's speech, 186-262); stage spectacle?
  
  Amphitryon 825-29 (Sosia's flexibility)
  I'm at a loss to explain all this, unless maybe there's
  Another Amphitryon who fills in when you're away,
  And does all your duties for you here at home.
  That second Sosia was shocking enough,
  But the other Amphitryon's even more astounding!
  
  Amphitryon 839-42 (Alcmena's "dowry")
  My idea of a dowry differs from what people generally think:
  I also brought you chastity, purity, and a modest passion, plus
  Fear of the gods, love of parents, harmony at home,
  And I'm a dutiful wife to you, a servant of all your needs, and a doer of good deeds.
  
  
• Amphitryon's befuddlement (wild goose chase offstage, Mercury's abuse, lost scenes > confrontation with Jupiter): mad rush toward his own house & assault on patriarchy/pietas (Scene 14), loss of self/identity
  
  Amphitryon 1046-52
  Whose life in all Thebes is more wretched than mine? What should I do
  When no one in the world knows me, and I'm the butt of every joke?
  Here's my plan: I'm breaking into the house and the first person I see,
  Maid, slave, my wife, her lover, my father, my grandfather—
  It makes no difference to me—is dead right there on the spot!
  No one can stop me, not Jove or all the gods united together!
  Yes, my mind's made up! I'm going right into the house—
  
  
  Baby Hercules Fresco from the House of the Vettii, Pompeii (60-79 CE)
  
  
• Bromia's messenger's speech (Scene 15): "Who's this old man lying in front of the house? / Zapped by Jove perhaps?" (1072-3); her supernatural story?
  
  GROUPS
  
  Scene 6 (861-81): Jupiter addresses the audience
  Scene 9 (984-1008): Mercury plays the "running slave" (cf. Terence, Self-Tormentor, 38)
  Scenes 16-17 (1131-43): the finale
  
  
• Why is Tiresias (summoned by Amphitryon, 1128-9) dismissed in the end?
  
  Wake Forest U. (17 mins.) Amphitryon: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OwBxqv6i9Gc